


After Disaster

by SingingInTheRaiin



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: (even if he won't admit it), Alternate Universe, Gen, M/M, Minister for Magic Tom Riddle, Romance, Sort Of, Tom hates not understanding anything, but he also loves a good mystery, smitten tom riddle, time travel stuff, unexplained phenomena
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-05
Updated: 2019-09-05
Packaged: 2020-10-10 13:57:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20529170
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SingingInTheRaiin/pseuds/SingingInTheRaiin
Summary: “To my cheating husband, I leave you a curse in my name. Every time you see movement out of the corner of your eye, every time you hear a noise with no cause, every time you feel a cool breath against your cheek, or an invisible weight on your chest as you sleep, know that it is my curse to you. Know that you hurt me with your foul, disloyal ways, and that I will rest peacefully in the ever after knowing that you will never rest peacefully again. Love, your dearest Emerelda.” Tom scoffed as he lowered the note once he was finished reading it aloud, and looked at the solicitor with one eyebrow raised. “This isn’t for me.”Tom's got a bit of a curse on his hands. Luckily for him, this curse comes in a rather attractive form.





	After Disaster

_“To my cheating husband, I leave you a curse in my name. Every time you see movement out of the corner of your eye, every time you hear a noise with no cause, every time you feel a cool breath against your cheek, or an invisible weight on your chest as you sleep, know that it is my curse to you. Know that you hurt me with your foul, disloyal ways, and that I will rest peacefully in the ever after knowing that you will never rest peacefully again. Love, your dearest Emerelda.”_ Tom scoffed as he lowered the note once he was finished reading it aloud, and looked at the solicitor with one eyebrow raised. “This isn’t for me.”

The solicitor shrugged. “Nobody wants to be cursed, but, well, that’s why you shouldn’t cheat, mate. You are Thomas Riddle, are you not?”

Tom sighed, and felt a headache starting to build. “Yes, my name is Tom Riddle, but no, this letter is a mistake. It must be for some other Tom Riddle. I’ve never been married, sir, so I could not possibly have a wife. I do not even know a single person with the name ‘Emerelda’, and I’ve certainly never cheated on any of my partners! I came to you because your address was on a business card included with the letter. This whole thing is just a mistake, and I would very much appreciate it if you could remove the curse as quickly as possible.”

The solicitor gingerly took the letter from Tom, perching a pair of spectacles on the bridge of his nose as he read it again. “Is it possible that you just don’t recall-”

“I am the Minister of Magic!” Tom snapped, his patience at its very end after an entire week of getting hardly any sleep or work done. “I think all of the bloody country would know if I’d been married!”

The solicitor sighed as he handed the letter back. “Well, my office will investigate this matter. If we can find some other Tom Riddle who did have a wife Emerelda Riddle, then we will send our best curse breakers to take care of your problem. Until then, just try to ignore it.”

There wasn’t even an answer to such a stupid suggestion that wouldn’t involve something being set on fire. And as irritated as Tom was at the moment, he knew that he still needed to maintain his reputation. So he stood up, re-buttoned his vest, and gave the solicitor a jerky nod before abruptly turning and marching out of the office. 

He went straight home, already having figured out that his location didn’t matter when it came to the curse’s activity. It seemed to usually flare up worst whenever he was actually about to do something productive or important, and that was the only pattern he’d noticed so far. He slammed the front door shut behind him, and was once again grateful for the fact that he kept no personal staff employed in his home. He didn’t need anyone else seeing him lose his composure.

He went to his study and sat down with a huff, pulling out a packet of papers that he still needed to look through before deciding whether to approve them or not. He was able to get a few pages in before the curse started up. Something flashed by in his peripheral, and there were a few obnoxious groaning noises. 

Tom tried to just grit his teeth and ignore it, since he was pretty sure that engaging would only make it worse, but then the door to the room slammed open and shut a couple of times, and Tom couldn’t stand it anymore. He whirled around but there was nothing there, just like always. He’d already tried searching every book of curses he could find, but had yet to figure out what specific one had been attached to that letter, and was therefore stuck with it.

“Enough!” he barked out, slamming his hand down on the desk at the same time. “I am not the one who was meant to receive that letter, and I have done nothing to deserve this treatment!” (almost nothing, anyways) “So you will cease these activities! Remove your curse, you wretched fiend!”

There was a long pause, and everything seemed much more silent than it had in a whole week. Then, as Tom was watching, a figure materialized in front of him. He stared as the figure took a more solid form, revealing a young man with messy black hair, and bright green eyes covered by a set of round lenses. “You, er… you're not the intended recipient?” he asked hesitantly.

Tom had seen a great many things in his life accomplished with magic, but he’d certainly never heard of a curse that could take the form of a person and talk in such a soft voice. “No, I’m not,” he finally managed to get out, trying to hide his shock even though he was pretty sure that it was already too late for that. “Are you the curse?” There was never an excuse to miss the opportunity to consume more knowledge.

The other man reached up to scratch awkwardly at the back of his neck, looking for all the world like a teenager who’d just been caught breaking the rules despite having the appearance of a man in his late twenties. “Ah, kinda? I mean, I’m not really a curse, I don’t think. More of a ghost, I guess. I lived in the house that Miss Emerelda moved in to, and we became good friends. She told me why she’d left home, and then when she fell ill, she asked me to do her a favor by haunting her ex.”

Tom’s shoulders slumped down. There wasn’t anything particularly interesting about a ghost, and they were much easier to get rid of than curses were. “Well, in that case…” he started to pull out his wand, but then the other man disappeared before Tom could even point at him. He sighed, and hoped that the ghost wouldn’t be offended enough to keep ‘haunting’ him.

The next few days passed by in surprising quiet, and Tom felt rather chipper at work. He even dismissed everyone to go home early on Friday, since he knew that they were all itching to leave anyways. He finished a few last papers, and then decided to treat himself to a day off as well.

He got home about an hour and a half earlier than usual, but paused in the doorway to the kitchen when he saw an intruder. He cleared his throat loudly to make his presence clear, and the intruder whipped around. It was the ghost, still looking strangely corporeal, and he was in the middle of munching on an apple- which definitely didn’t seem like ghostly behavior. “What are you doing?”

The ghost guiltily lowered his arm, letting a few drops of juice drop out of the bitten apple and onto the floor. Great. “I- you’re home early.”

Tom narrowed his eyes. “Have you just been wandering around my house while I’m out everyday?”

The ghost shrugged one shoulder. “What else am I supposed to do? It’s not like there’s a secret invisible library or telly that I can use. So I just have to make do with yours.”

“I don’t have a telly,” Tom said dumbly, before another detail of the scene hit him. “Hang on, how are you even holding that? And why are you solid?” 

The ghost glanced down at himself, but didn’t seem surprised as he looked back up at Tom. “That’s just what ghosts are like.”

“No it’s not,” Tom insisted. “Are you even really a ghost?” There hadn’t been any signs of disapperation when the man had left the other day, and the wards around Tom’s home were supposed to be strong enough to keep out anyone, but he just couldn’t classify this man as a ghost. So what was he? “What’s your name?”

The man blinked owlishly. “Harry, I think.”

“You think?”

Harry immediately took a step back, and looked quite defensive. “Well how am I supposed to know? It’s not like ghosts can remember their lives or anything. Miss Emerelda always called me Harry, and it seems like as good a name as any.”

Tom frowned. “Ghosts can remember their lives,” he said slowly. “Harry- or whoever you are- you are definitely not a ghost. Who told you that you are?”

Harry shrugged again. “I don’t know. I guess I just assumed. It makes the most sense, doesn’t it?” The way he said it made it sound as though he had absolutely no idea what made the most sense, and was waiting for Tom to inform him. 

It would be easy enough to just tell Harry to get the hell out of his house, but now that Tom had realized that Harry wasn’t a ghost, it meant that there was something new to be discovered here, and he was the last person who would let that pass him by. So Tom offered Harry one of his more charming grins, and crossed his arms over his chest. “I don’t know what you are, Harry, but I’m happy to help you figure it out.”

For a moment Harry looked uncertain, but then he nodded once. “Thanks. And sorry again about the haunting stuff. I won’t do that anymore.” Then he disappeared without another word, and the half-eaten apple dropped to the floor with a wet thud.

,,,

“Well, I’m definitely not tied to the house,” Harry pointed out in a cheery tone as he suddenly appeared in the middle of Tom’s office while Tom was trying to fill out important paperwork. Then Harry kept talking, before Tom had the chance to tell him to just piss off for the moment. “I know that you don’t pack a lunch, so you must get pretty hungry, right? I know of this great little chippy down in muggle London. I could grab us both a bite?”

Then Tom’s irritation faded away, replaced by his insatiable curiosity. “Are you a muggle, Harry?”

Harry paused to think about it for a moment, and then shrugged. “I don’t think I am. Muggle-born, maybe. I don’t have any specific memories, but I can remember certain emotions, like…” he trailed off, a lost look in his eyes for just a second before he shook his head. “Ah, nothing worth talking about, though. What about you, Tom?”

Images of a bleak orphanage flashed through Tom’s mind, and he quickly brushed them aside. “I am the Minister of Magic,” he reminded Harry. “I think that tells you all you need to know.” 

He could feel the weight of Harry’s eyes on him for another few seconds, but he ignored it in order to get back to his paperwork. He got lost in it, and by the time he looked up again, there was a greasy paper package resting on the edge of his desk, but no one else in sight.

,,,

“How did you and Miss Emerelda become friends?” Tom asked, notepad in hand so that he could jot down notes about Harry’s answers.

Harry glanced up at Tom with a slight frown, and set down the knife he’d been using to chop vegetables. It turned out that Harry was actually rather brilliant at cooking, and seemed to enjoy it, so Tom had decided it was beneficial to both of them to just let Harry continue. “It was rather awkward, at first. I know I gave her quite a fright the first time I appeared in front of her. But I kept apologizing until she got annoyed of it. I cooked her an apology dinner, and then she taught me how to make her family’s recipe for apple tart. We talked about the books that we both enjoyed. She taught me how to dance-”

“You know how to dance?” Tom knew that there had to be an amused gleam in his eye, but he didn’t bother to conceal it. Harry seemed to live in his own little universe sometimes, entirely oblivious to the details of the world around him. “I don’t believe it. You look exactly like the type of guy who’d have two left feet.”

Harry’s face flushed a lovely shade of pink. “I can dance,” he insisted stubbornly. Then his face lit up. “I’ll prove it!” He grabbed Tom by the elbow and then yanked him into the sitting room. He rummaged through Tom’s record collection until he found the one he wanted, and got the music started. It was a lively piece, and Tom couldn’t even remember ever having listened to it before. Then Harry grabbed his hands, and began jumping all around the room, wearing a bright grin on his face, and having cheeks flushed from exertion rather than embarrassment. And ghosts certainly didn’t sweat so much when they danced around like madmen (If anyone asked, Tom would certainly deny that he had been dancing as well. He was just getting pulled around against his will, and the smirk on his face was meant to scare Harry away, not encourage him). 

,,,

After several weeks of being able to sleep through the night in peace, Tom had gotten used to not having any disturbances. But that didn’t stop him from jolting awake when he heard a loud noise. For a moment, he thought Harry had decided to go back to his old ways. But Harry wasn’t even in the room, and the noise had sounded more like a strike of thunder than anything.

Tom wanted to just roll over and go back to sleep, but for some reason his instincts screamed at him to move. He sighed as he got out of bed and pulled on his robe, hoping that there wouldn’t be any kind of issue that was liable to keep him awake for too long. Once he left his own room, he paused in the hallway to listen carefully. It took a minute, but then he realized that in between some of the louder bouts of thunder, he could hear what sounded like soft crying.

He followed the noise to the library, where the fireplace was empty, and he could hear the sound of wind whipping against the windows. He could also hear the sound of crying louder now, and continued towards it. He knelt down, and peered underneath the big comfy chair that he liked to sit in to read.

Curled up in an impossibly small ball beneath the chair was Harry, eyes squeezed tightly shut, limbs shaking. Tom reached under to grab the man, but Harry flinched back and let out a loud wail that sounded like it came from a tortured animal. Tom held his hands up in surrender, but didn’t try to move away from the chair. “What’s going on?”

It took a few long seconds, but then Harry finally opened his eyes, though they seemed to flicker about in every direction rather than just meeting with Tom’s. “I don’t want to remember about before,” he said softly, and Tom had to lean closer just to hear over the sound of the wind and the rain. “I think that I remembered something tonight, once the storm started, and it hurt. I don’t want any of it if it’s going to hurt so much, Tom.”

Tom sighed, and then shifted so that he was sitting on the floor next to the chair, back leaned up against the side of it. “Want to talk about it?” He remembered from his childhood that whenever one of the other children had a nightmare, one of the older girls, May-Lin, would rub their back and ask them to talk about their dreams. It was a strategy that usually seemed to work for them. 

Tom heard the sound of small movement, though he couldn’t tell whether it had been a head shake or a nod, so he just waited silently. It didn’t take long for Harry to start talking. “I remember- or maybe I just dreamed it- a family. And they hated me and called me a freak. And we traveled around a bunch, and ended up in this tiny little boat going across a lake on a night like this. And every time the boat tipped to the side, I was sure that we were about to be plunged into the water and we would all drown. The rain and splashing water was freezing cold, and I didn’t have nearly enough clothes. And then we finally reached our destination, which was a run-down old place with leaks in the roof and only a couple of rooms total, and there was a loud bang, and then… I didn’t want to remember any more after that. I don’t know how it could possibly be anything good.”

Tom sighed, and put his hands flat on the ground. “Sounds like you didn’t have the best childhood. I guess I can’t blame you for wanting to forget about it all. If it was an option for me to do that, I might. I was raised in an orphanage, you know. I always knew that I was special, but the other children didn’t get along with me. I didn’t fit in with them. Because of that, it took me a while to figure out who I was. Or maybe I figured it out way too soon, I’m not sure.” He closed his eyes, and tipped his head back. “I don’t even know why I’m telling you this. It’s not like I’ve got some kind of point that I’m trying to make. Anyways, just…” he trailed off, and tried to think hard about what he was going to say next. Tom hated when he didn’t sound absolutely confident, but he thought that he’d hate it more if he said the wrong things to Harry. “Just don’t worry about it,” he finally settled on. “You don’t need to know who you are right this second. And whoever you are, it doesn’t have to be based on a bunch of memories.”

They both sat there in silence for a little while longer, and Tom had to refrain from jumping back when a smaller hand rested on top of one of his. “Thanks,” Harry whispered. “Ah, you can go back to bed now. Sorry if I woke you up.” Though Harry sounded somewhat confused about how he might have accomplished that.

Tom shrugged, and kept his hand exactly where it was. Instead of the eerie, cold feeling of a ghost passing through him, he just had the solid warmth of a hand on his. “I’ve really got nothing better going on. A library’s just as cozy as a bed- so long as there’s a fire.” He glanced over at the fireplace, and used some of his limited wandless magic to get it going again, and the cheerful sound of the crackling flames was almost enough to drown out the storm.

,,,

The journalists were all snapping away as many pictures and questions as they thought they could get away with. Yesterday, all kinds of articles had been published slandering Tom’s name, all claiming to have the same ‘secret source’ that had given them excerpts from the journals of the late Albus Dumbledore. Dumbledore had apparently thought of Tom as a very odd boy who needed to be watched because he was potentially quite dangerous. And now everyone wanted to hear Tom’s side of things.

It felt like Tom had answered the same few questions over and over again, sticking to the script cards that his staff had given to him, when he suddenly felt an arm wrapping around his waist, and a head leaning on his shoulder. He stiffened for a moment, but relaxed when he looked down and saw the familiar messy mop of hair. 

Harry smiled out into the crowd with an unfairly charming look. “Sorry, don’t mind me. I’m just here to support Tom. You can continue on with your questions now. I won’t say a word, you can just pretend like I’m not even here.”

But despite Harry’s words, the entire press conference seemed to have forgotten about the accusations and questions they’d just been slinging around, and were now more focused on Harry. They wanted to know who he was and how he knew Tom, and a million other personal details about their lives. But at least they were no longer asking if Tom was a psychopath. 

Tom tuned back in to hear Harry’s response to a question that he’d missed. “Oh, we live together,” Harry said in a ridiculously innocent voice. “We’re quite close, in fact. I just wish that you people wouldn’t keep him here so late some nights. I hate when dinner’s cold by time he gets home.” Harry peered up at Tom, and gave him a tiny wink that only Tom could see, then turned back to the crowd. 

Without even realizing it, Tom found himself smiling down at Harry. How could he be mad about the fact he’d just been saved from being berated with exhausting questions? And he couldn’t help the way his heart seemed to beat faster as he thought of that mischievous look that had flashed across Harry’s face for just a moment. It was so rare that he found anyone who could keep up with him; he certainly hadn’t expected Harry to be one of the few.

,,,

When Tom got into the office the day after the press conference, the Undersecretary, John Errol, was leaning his hip against the side of the desk. “My job is to make your job easier,” he announced, as if Tom wasn’t somehow already aware of that fact. Tom said nothing as he brushed past the man to sit down at his desk and open his briefcase. The Undersecretary crossed his arms over his chest. “I can’t do that if I don’t know everything that’s going on in your life, Riddle. Like perhaps the fact that you have a boyfriend?”

Tom’s head jerked up at that, but he kept his face blank. “What are you talking about? Don’t be daft, Errol, it doesn’t suit you.”

John scowled. “It’s in all the papers, so don’t try and act innocent. Did you honestly think that the best way to avoid a scandal would be to offer up a different scandal? I thought that you were supposed to be a good politician. When you’re going to go with distraction tactics, you’re not supposed to direct the attention right back on yourself!”

Tom hadn’t actually read any of the morning papers yet, but he did know what things had been said to the journalists, since he’d been there and all. “Did Harry ever actually claim to be my significant other?” he asked calmly.

That seemed to take John somewhat by surprise, and he answered reluctantly. “Well… no, not exactly. But it’s all implied there, Riddle! All that domestic stuff that you’ve never wanted to be involved with before? If anyone gets that actor to talk, then you’ll be totally screwed. Everyone knows that the one thing worse than a scandal is a coverup!”

Tom looked back to his desk, pulling out the important papers for the day. “What actor?”

Even though he wasn’t looking, he could practically feel the way John rolled his eyes at him. “How about the one who was hanging all over you yesterday? Your mysterious housemate who no one has ever seen or heard of before?”

Tom shrugged. “There’s no actor, Errol. Harry is perfectly real, and he does live in my house, and he does do the cooking so long as I do the washing up.”

John sighed. “Fine, so you were acting then. But either way-”

“There was no acting involved,” Tom insisted. 

He looked up when John made a strange choking noise. “Are you being serious right now?” Tom nodded slowly, as if John was an idiot child who couldn’t understand some simple concept. “Well then congratulations, mate. I’m sure most people would kill to have someone look at them the way you look at this Harry.” He slapped a paper down on the desk, and then hurried out of the office, slamming the door shut behind him.

Tom waited a few seconds before picking up the newspaper and unfolding it, immediately seeing his picture plastered across the front page. But it wasn’t just him, it was him and Harry. And in the picture, he could see it on loop as he looked away from the cameras, and towards Harry, a fond little smile on his face, and an intense look in his eyes. The headline seemed to say it all, screaming out: ‘Has Minister Riddle Found True Love?’

,,,

Harry babbled on about something or another throughout dinner, while Tom sat there silently, growing more and more tense with each passing moment. Clearly there was some kind of plot in place, and Harry had a plan to do something that involved lowering Tom’s defenses. Tom just hadn’t figured out what that plan was quite yet.

After they finished eating, Harry stacked the dishes in the sink for later, and then pulled out the apple tart he’d made for dessert. That he’d made using the recipe of a now dead woman. Tom hit his boiling point when Harry kept his spoon in his mouth for far too long in a move that could not possibly be unintentional.

Tom slammed his hand down on the table, startling Harry into dropping the spoon entirely. “What the hell is your plan?”

Harry furrowed his eyebrows. “Plan? What are you talking about?”

Tom leapt to his feet and stalked around the table until he was standing right in front of Harry, who tilted his head back in order to see Tom properly. “You know exactly what I’m talking about. Showing up here with a sob story designed specifically to catch my sympathy, and a problem perfect for my curiosity, and a million other things that are far too coincidental.”

“Like what?” Harry breathed out. “You’re not making any sense.”

Tom slammed his hands down on the table again, bracketing Harry in place. “The way you move and talk and act is all as though it was designed perfectly made for me. There’s no other explanation than that you’re playing some kind of honeypot.”

Harry looked somewhat dazed by their proximity, and spoke very softly, as if there was some kind of sanctity between them that needed to be maintained. “There is no grand plan, Tom. I just like spending time with you.” Then he reached up to grab Tom by the lapel and yank him down into a hard kiss, teeth clacking together painfully. 

When they broke apart, Tom couldn’t help feeling some manly pride at seeing the state Harry was in, with his lips looking swollen and his cheeks pink and his hair somehow even more of a mess than usual. Well, he hadn’t learned Harry’s plan yet, but he was sure that he could figure it out. He would just have to keep a close eye on Harry. A very close eye.

,,,

“Tom?” Harry shuffled into the study, looking strangely adorable in a set of Tom’s spare pajamas. He still disappeared sometimes without meaning to, but he said that he felt more grounded when he had an actual person lying next to him at night. “I think that maybe I’m not real. Or maybe that you’re not?”

Tom looked up from what he’d been working on, and couldn’t help feeling worried. Had Harry finally snapped and gone off the deep end? “What are you talking about?”

Harry fiddled with the cuffs of the sleeves that were just slightly too long on him, and then he took a few steps closer to Tom. He looked somehow smaller than normal. “I think that maybe I’ve remembered more about my life, but I also don’t know how any of it could be possible. I imagined that I grew up in the 1990s, and that you were an evil creature that I was supposed to defeat, but it turned out that we were joined together at the very soul. I think that every time I go to sleep, that version of things feels so much more real, but whenever I’m awake here, this is the one that feels much more real. I don’t even know how to figure out which is the truth, or if there’s even any amount of truth to it in the first place, but I do know that something very bizarre is going on, and whatever it is, it has to do with you.”

Tom stood up and walked over to Harry. He reached out to grab both of Harry’s hands. “Are you saying that I don’t feel real to you?” He leaned closer to pull Harry into a fierce, almost painful kiss. “Was that not real?” he whispered.

Harry stared at him with wide eyes. “No- I- don’t know. Tom, why did you become Minister of Magic?”

“What kind of a question is that? It’s one of the most powerful positions in the wizarding world, Harry. How could I possibly not want that?”

There was a thoughtful frown on Harry’s face. “But you could have more power than the Minister, than anybody. Haven’t you ever wanted to be immortal?”

“To live forever? I suppose at one point, when I was a foolish child, scared by a muggle war that I didn’t want any part of, I may have wished for such a thing. But there was…” he trailed off and tilted his head as old memories caught up with him, things he hadn’t thought about in decades. “I told you that I didn’t get along with the other children in the orphanage, right? Well, there was this one boy who I befriended. He was small and bullied by the others, and for some reason, he was always following me around, so I took him under my wing.” He squeezed Harry’s hands tight enough to bruise as the painful memories filled his mind. “He never spoke a word, but I knew that he’d promised to be with me forever. But then he grew ill, I think. In a time before I knew about magic, before I knew how to make him better. I left for school one day, and he was gone by the time I got back.” 

“I’m sorry,” Harry murmured. “But why didn’t that make you fear death even more?” 

Tom shrugged. “In some ways it did. But it also made the idea of eternity sound even more terrible. If I ever let myself care about anyone else again, I would just outlive them.” Something about his memories bugged him, and Tom closed his eyes to try and picture things more clearly. “Now that I think about it, that boy looked like what I imagine you would have as a child. And I never saw his body. He was just gone.”

When he opened his eyes again, he could see surprise, and then recognition light up in Harry’s eyes. “I wasn’t supposed to be there, but once I met you, I didn’t want to go. I think I went straight to Miss Emerelda’s after that, but I don’t know how long ago it was. I don’t understand, Tom. What am I? Why do I remember two different childhoods? Why do I disappear when I have no wish to?” He squeezed Tom’s hands in return, as if holding on would stop him from vanishing right in that moment. “Who am I?”

Tom tugged on of his hands free so that he could reach up and brush aside some of Harry’s messy hair, wanting to see the other man’s eyes better. He frowned when he saw a scar on Harry’s forehead. It was shaped like a lightning bolt, like- like a killing curse. He pressed his thumb against it, and it suddenly felt like his entire body was igniting.

Suddenly he saw flashes of moments that must have belonged to Harry, of a wretched eleven years of life, of a noseless monster constantly pursuing him, of trial after trial and a fight to survive. But all of it was in a hazy, dream-like quality, and then he saw other glimpses much clearer. Of a baby appearing on a doorstep, and then being quickly deposited at the nearest orphanage. Of the feeling of flickering in and out of reality, not always remembered. Of feeling an instinctual connection to Tom, and clinging to him, as one of the few people who never ever forgot. Of being normal little boys together, or at least as normal as the two of them could manage. Of flickering away one day, this time for good, only to reappear in a big empty house, where he sat and waited and waited and grew, until the past became nothing more than a distant dream, and then became nothing at all. Of meeting a hurt young woman, and becoming her friend, and staying with her for as long as he could, and then leaving to fulfill the last favor she had asked of him. Of seeing Tom, who looked beautiful and cold and in need of… something.

Both Tom and Harry gasped loudly as they fell apart from each other, and then stared at each other with wild eyes. Tom was the first to recover, and he quickly straightened up. “Harry…” But he couldn’t meet those bright green eyes, couldn’t stand to see the tears glittering in them, so Tom turned and hurried away, leaving Harry behind.

,,,

Tom didn’t see Harry around for several days, but he wasn’t idle in that time. He did lots and lots of research. He looked into time travel, and parallel universes, and unforgivable curses, and anything else he could think of that could potentially be relevant. Eventually he was satisfied that he might have some answers, but there was no one to share them with because Harry still hadn’t returned. 

It was almost an entire month before Tom rolled over in bed and found a source of familiar warmth there. He started for a moment, and then quickly settled back down, and instead gave Harry a prim, arched eyebrow. “I thought you were gone,” he said gruffly.

Harry shrugged, and avoided meeting Tom’s gaze. “I thought I was too. I’m not really sure where I go when I’m not here, but I know that it’s somewhere lonely.”

There was a long moment of silence that stretched between them before Tom finally thought to speak again. “I think I might know what’s going on. I think that all those things you dream about did happen, sort of. But it didn’t happen to you, it happened to some other Harry. Or maybe it’s a potential future you could have had, and for some reason, you’re able to see it. But that night when the scary monster tried to kill you, something went wrong, and you were snatched out of your home by some force that I still don’t understand. You were brought back to me when I was a child, and you changed me just enough that the future you saw could never actually happen.”

“So am I supposed to be here?” Harry asked in a small voice.

Tom shrugged one shoulder. “I don’t know. I always thought time travel was purely theoretical, and yet you somehow managed it as an infant, so I honestly don’t know what’s ‘supposed’ to be or not. I just know that I needed you, and I think you needed me too.”

“I still do,” Harry assured him, reaching up to gently touch Tom’s cheek. “If there’s some force out there that could displace me in time, I suppose it could also be responsible for a grieving woman to have an ex-husband with the same name as you, right? It can’t be a coincidence that we met again so long after we last saw each other.”

Tom shook his head. “No, I definitely don’t believe in coincidences. Everything happens for a reason.” He hesitated for a moment before continuing. “You know me, Harry. Normally I’m almost impossibly eager to learn about everything there is. But I think that in this case, just this once, I can accept that there’s something I don’t know. What difference does it make how you got here, so long as you are here? You are here, aren’t you?”

Harry smiled, and nodded. “Yeah. I may as well be a ghost or a curse or whatever, because I certainly don’t plan on leaving you alone anytime soon.”

Too many emotions were whirling through Tom for him to summon up a smile in return, but he knew that Harry would be able to understand the intensity in his eyes. “You’re not a curse, Harry. You are absolutely not a curse.” Then he reached out to wrap his arms around Harry and tug the other man closer to him. If anyone ever asked, Tom would adamantly deny that he enjoyed cuddling (Harry was the only one it was enjoyable with, anyways). But just for now, in the privacy of his own bed, Tom decided that he could afford to be just a little bit soft. If it was with Harry, then it was okay. No, it was perfect.


End file.
